VENICE, Fla. (AP) — Transgender golfer Hailey Davidson started the second stage of LPGA qualifying Tuesday with a 78 as studies surfaced of 275 feminine gamers signing a letter asking prime golf organizations to repeal insurance policies that enable individuals assigned male at start to compete in girls’s occasions.
Outkick reported that the Unbiased Ladies’s Discussion board shared the letter despatched Aug. 19 to the LPGA, the U.S. Golf Affiliation and the Worldwide Golf Federation. The letter was despatched three days earlier than the pre-qualifying stage of Q-school.
Davidson, who narrowly missed out on a playoff throughout U.S. Ladies’s Open qualifying this yr, tied for forty second in LPGA pre-qualifying to advance to the following stage.
The LPGA at present permits gamers who’ve undergone gender-affirming surgical procedure after puberty and meet hormone remedy necessities.
Davidson, who has been open about her transition, mentioned in an Instagram put up in March that the LPGA’s “coverage is working fairly nicely,” given the shortage of success by transgender gamers on the highest ranges of girls’s golf.
Golfweek obtained a memo from Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan in August by which she knowledgeable LPGA and Epson Tour gamers the tour would conclude a assessment of its coverage by the tip of the yr and have any adjustments applied earlier than subsequent season.
The second stage of qualifying, delayed per week by Hurricane Milton, started Tuesday at Plantation Golf and Nation Membership. The highest 35 and ties advance to remaining qualifying. Any participant who completes all 4 rounds will get restricted standing on the developmental Epson Tour.
Davidson’s spherical of 78 put her in a tie for 171st within the 194-player discipline.
The letter despatched to the LPGA, USGA and IGF was signed by present and former gamers from numerous excursions.
“It’s important for the integrity and equity of girls’s golf to have a transparent and constant participation coverage in place based mostly on a participant’s immutable intercourse,” the letter mentioned. “There are variations between the sexes — feminine and male — that particularly have an effect on our sport of golf.”
Davidson had a scholarship to play on the lads’s workforce at Wilmington College in Delaware earlier than transferring to the lads’s workforce at Christopher Newport in Virginia. Golfweek reported she started hormone therapies in 2015 and had gender-affirming surgical procedure in 2021.
Davidson received a event and was runner-up 3 times on the NXXT Golf tour in Florida earlier this yr. The small circuit in March up to date its eligibility coverage to require all gamers to be assigned feminine at start.
NXXT Golf was the second mini-tour to replace its coverage. The Cactus Tour in Arizona introduced final month it was reinstating its female-at-birth requirement for eligibility.